The popularity of cellular communication devices has dramatically increased in recent years. As a result most emergency services personnel own or use a cellular telephone or mobile device with cellular communication capability (referred to herein as a “wireless handset”) on a daily basis. Thus, cellular telephones and the cellular communication system provide a robust and flexible communication system that can be leveraged by emergency response teams, city and county governments, and regional and national disaster relief and response organizations.
Nevertheless, the cellular communication infrastructure is potentially vulnerable to hurricanes, earthquakes, terrorist strikes and similar events. For example, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, emergency personnel responding to the disaster were hobbled by the collapse of the New Orleans cellular communication infrastructure. To address such vulnerabilities, additional cellular communication capacity can be added to a disaster region by activating a deployable cellular communication system to provide emergency response teams and personnel with the ability to wirelessly communicate. Such recently developed deployable units, referred to herein as a “switch on wheels,” can include a CDMA2000 base station and switch, Land Mobile Radio (LMR) interoperability equipment, a satellite Fixed Service Satellite (FSS) ground station for remote interconnection to the Internet and PSTN, and, optionally, a source or remote electrical power such as a gasoline or diesel powered generator. A more complete description of an example deployable switch on wheels is provided in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/249,143 filed Oct. 10, 2008 which claims the benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/979,341 filed Oct. 11, 2007, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
These switch on wheels are effectively mobile cellular base stations which may be deployed in an incident response area and operated as a cellular tower antenna. The switch on wheels sends and receives communication signals from a plurality of wireless handsets and serves as a gateway portal to the rest of the conventional communications infrastructure including the public switch telephone network (PSTN) and Internet. Communications between the switch on wheels and a wireless handset are broken down into packets for transport as a VOIP communication, and then transmitted via satellite to a ground station outside the disaster area from which the call is forwarded through the telephone network or the Internet to the recipient.
Whether emergency response personnel are communicating using commercial cellular networks or a deployable cellular switch on wheels, they need to know who to call. While organization charts and telephone directors can be useful in normal circumstances, during an emergency situation, determining who is available and nearby can be difficult.